Network Simulator (NS2)

A CASE STUDY
On Implementation of mobile network using network simulator (NS2)
Prepared by:
Rohan A. Chavan
(Roll-No 10, T.E-COMP)
Department of Computer Engineering, Shri. L.R. Tiwari College of Engineering,
Mira Road, Maharashtra.
Presented to:
Prof: Garima Mishra
(Lecturer, Department of computer engineering)

Date of Submission
March 24, 2015
Abstract: the main goal of this paper is to present how to use NS2simulation for
designing wireless networks and using Cryptography algorithm as to security
information. It briefly describes the basic wireless networks categories, analyzes
wireless LAN networks, briefly describes their components and technologies, explains
the Wi-Fi technology and analyzes property sources related to wireless networks
simulators and its detailed description, Specify the configuration for the simple wireless
network and create corresponding model by using ns-2 simulator, demonstrates selected
characteristics of the specified network configuration using the simulation model, and
show scenario of transmission data among nodes.
Keywords: NS2, Wireless Network, Security, RC5 algorithm.
History about NS-2
1. NS-1

Network Simulator (NS2)

The first version of ns, known as ns-1, was
developed at Lawrence Berkeley National
Laboratory (LBNL) in the 1995-97 timeframe by
Steve McCanne, Sally Floyd, Kevin Fall, and other
contributors. This was known as the LBNL
Network Simulator, and derived from an earlier
simulator known as REAL by S. Keshav. The core
of the simulator was written in C++, with Tcl-based
scripting of simulation scenarios. Long-running
contributions have also come from Sun
Microsystems, the UC Berkeley Daedelus, and
Carnegie Mellon Monarch projects it used.
2. NS-2
In 1996-97, ns version 2 (ns-2) was initiated based
on a refactoring by Steve McCanne. Use of Tcl was
replaced by MIT's Object Tcl (OTcl), an objectoriented dialect Tcl. The core of ns-2 is also written
in C++, but the C++ simulation objects are linked
to shadow objects in OTcl and variables can be
linked between both language realms. Simulation
scripts are written in the OTcl language, an
extension of the Tcl scripting language.
Presently, ns-2 consists of over 300,000 lines of
source code, and there is probably a comparable
amount of contributed code that is not integrated
directly into the main distribution (many forks of
ns-2 exist, both maintained and unmaintained). It
runs on GNU/Linux, FreeBSD, Solaris, Mac OS X
and Windows versions that support Cygwin. It is
licensed for use under version 2 of the GNU
General Public License.
3. NS-3
A team led by Tom Henderson, George Riley, Sally
Floyd, and Sumit Roy, applied for and received
funding from the U.S. National Science Foundation
(NSF) to build a replacement for ns-2, called ns-3.
This team collaborated with the Planete project of
INRIA at Sophia Antipolis, with Mathieu Lacage as
the software lead, and formed a new open source
project.
In the process of developing ns-3, it was decided to
completely abandon backward-compatibility with
ns-2. The new simulator would be written from
scratch, using the C++ programming language.

Development of ns-3 began in July 2006. A

framework for generating Python bindings
(pybindgen) and use of the Waf build system were
contributed by Gustavo Carneiro.
The first release, ns-3.1 was made in June 2008,
and afterwards the project continued making
quarterly software releases, and more recently has
moved to three releases per year. Ns-3 made its
twenty first release (ns-3.21) in September 2014.

Introduction
NS (from network simulator) is a name for series of
discrete event network simulators, specifically ns-1,
ns-2 and ns-3. All of them are discrete-event
network simulators, primarily used in research [4]
and teaching. Ns-3 is free software, publicly
available under the GNU GPLv2 license for
research, development, and use.
A network that does not contain wire is known as
wireless network [9]. To design the wireless
scenario we are using very popular simulator NS2
among various simulation tools. It is an Object
oriented and discrete event driven network
simulator used by various researcher, teacher and
student into the education field for research point of
view
Design of wireless Network uses NS2, as a base on
Security evaluation, and describes the proposed
model of the system and complete description of
the Simulations and software program needed for
implementing the Network. Ns-2 is a widely used
tool to simulate of networks. Network simulator is a
part of software that predicates the performance of
a network without a real network being there.NS2
is a vital simulation tool for networks. It supports a
number of algorithms for routing and queuing. NS2
is very helpful because it is very costly to verify
viability of new algorithms, test architectures,
check topologies, check data transmission etc.
Network simulators are names for series of discrete
event network simulators and are heavily used in
ad-hoc networking res. and support popular
network protocols, offering simulation results for
wireless networks. Also using security in the
network the basic conceptions in the security of the
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Network Simulator (NS2)

network, then it discuss encryption and decryption
concept the implementation of non-conventional
(both blocks and stream ciphers).

What is ns-2?

Ns-2 stands for Network

Simulator version 2.
Is a discrete event simulator for
networking research.
Work at packet level.
Provide substantial support to
simulate bunch of protocols like
TCP, UDP, FTP, HTTP and DSR.
Simulate wired and wireless
network.
Is primarily UNIX based
Use TCL as its scripting
language.
Ns-2 is a standard experiment
environment in research
community.

Implementation of NS-2
1. Installing ns-2
Ns-2 network simulator was installed from the
website
http://www.isi.edu/nsnam/ns/
Installation of ns-2 could be a bit lengthy and a
time-consuming process. It involved downloading
and setting up a 250 MB package. However,
getting the simulator to work was the first step
involved in carrying out the simulations.
2. Understanding the basics involved in
ns-2 simulations
A very good tutorial to understand basic ns-2
simulations is available at the website:
http://www.isi.edu/nsnam/ns/tutorial/index.html
3. CMUs wireless extensions to ns-2
CMUs wireless extension to ns-2 (incorporated in
the current release ns-2.1b9a) provides the

implementation of the DSR, AODV, DSDV, TORA

routing protocols.
Nam is the basic visualization tool used for ns-2
simulations. However, it doesnt support the ad-hoc
simulations. Ad-hockey is a Perl/Tk program that
supports the visualization of ad-hoc simulations.
Unfortunately, I couldnt get the Ad-hockey
visualizer tool to work because of its compatibility
issues with the new versions of Perl/Tk module.

What's Nam?
Nam is a Tcl/TK based animation tool for viewing
network simulation traces and real world packet
traces. It supports topology layout, packet level
animation, and various data inspection tools.
Nam began at LBL. It has evolved substantially
over the past few years. The nam development
effort was an ongoing collaboration with the VINT
project. Currently, it is being developed as an open
source project hosted at Sourceforge.

WIRELESS NETWORK
Network is described as a network of devices which
communicates by using wireless technologies.
Network Wireless communication is used as a term
for transmission of information from one place to
another. This may be one-way communication as in
broadcasting systems (such as radio and TV), or
two-way communication (e.g. mobile phones
ground to Air and Computer network). In
telecommunications,
Network
wireless
communication is the transfer of information and
without the use of wires .Wireless Network
communication refers to any type of computer or
devices (for examples Access point, wireless
Router) network that is commonly associated with
communications
wireless
network
to
interconnections nodes. Network security is a
related topic in many organizations.
The widespread apprehension over network
security is due to the connectivity of many.
Consideration of security in the System
Development Life Cycle and save information is
essential for implementing and integrating a
3

Network Simulator (NS2)

comprehensive strategy for managing risk for all
information technology assets in a Networks.
Information security means that protecting
information and information systems from
unauthorized access, use, disclosure, disruption,
modification, perusal, inspection, eavesdrop,
recording or destruction. The terms information
security, computer security and assurance are
frequently used interchangeably. These fields are
interrelated often and share the common goals of
protecting the confidentiality, integrity and
availability of information; however, there are some
subtle differences between them.

CATEGORIES OF NETWORK
Wireless Networks can be classified into some
categories depending on different criteria (e.g. size
of the physical area that they are capable of
covering and domain of their use).The Wireless
networking refers to nearly every type of design as
some kind of area network. Common examples of
area network types are:
a.
b.
c.
d.
e.

PAN - Personal Area Network

WLAN - Wireless Local Area Network
WAN - Wide Area Network
MAN - Metropolitan Area Network
DAN - Desk Area Network

FEATURES OF NS2
NS2 (Network Simulator version2): NS2 is a
discrete event simulator targeted at networking
research. It provides support for simulation of TCP,
routing, and multicast protocols over all networks
wireless.NS2 can be employed in most UNIX
systems and windows (XP, VESTA and 7), and in
this paper windows XP is used. Most procedure
processes of the NS2 code are written in C++. It
uses TCL as its scripting language, Otcl adds object

orientation to TCL.NS (version 2) is an object

oriented, discrete event driven network simulator
that is freely distributed and open source.

STRUCTURE OF NS2
1. NS is an object oriented discrete event
simulator
(a). Simulator maintains list of events and executes
one event after another.
(b). Single thread of control: no locking or race
conditions.
2. Back end is C++ event scheduler.
(a). Protocols mostly.
3. Source code:
(a). Most of process procedures of NS2 code are
written in C++ code.
4. Scripting language:
(a). It uses TCL as its scripting language OTcl adds
object Orientation to TCL.
5. Protocols implemented in NS2:
(a). Transport layer (Traffic Agent) TCP, UDP.
(TCP using in our design of wireless network).
(b). Interface queue, Drop Tail queue.
6. Scalability:
(a). Per-packet processing must be fast;
(b). Separating control and packet handling.
7. Import C++ code to TCL script program
Figure 1 refers to directory of NS2 to run tcl
program to show Nam tool and show nodes:

Network Simulator (NS2)

PROGRAMMING
NS2

LANGUAGE

IN

The reason for having two programming languages

from the aims to have an easy to use, yet fast and
powerful simulator. C++ forms an efficient class
hierarchy core of ns-2 that takes care of handling
packets, headers and algorithms. Object Tcl, or
OTcl, is also an object oriented programming
language utilized in ns-2 for network scenario
creation, allowing fast modifications to scenario
scripts. OTcl and C++ interact with each other
through Tcl/C++interface called Tcl/C++ as
depicted in figure 2:

b. It provides a graphic interface.

c. It is compatible with many platforms.
d. It is flexible for integration.
e. It is a scripting language.
OTcl in ns-2 enables full control over simulation
setup, configuration, and occasional actions (e.g.
creating new TCP flows). It is a language that
compromise between speed and abstraction level
offered to the user. In my Scenario, using Tcl
language to design wireless network ( Set
parameters node ,node configurations, topology,
Connection between nodes, transfer packages and
simulation time ) and C++ language using to
Security package (encryption /decryption of data
transfer between nodes)are achieved.

SECURITY
Security Goals:

Tcl/Otcl is a language with very simple syntaxes

that allows easy integration with other languages.
Tcl was created by JohnOusterhout. The
characteristics of these languages are:

All security system must provide a pack of security

functions that can confirm the secrecy of the
system. These functions are usually referred to as
the goals of the security system. These goals can be
listed under the following three main categories in
this paper:
a. Confidentiality
b. Integrity

a. It allows a fast development.

5

Network Simulator (NS2)

c. Availability
In this paper, the information Encryption uses
cryptography algorithms symmetric to encryption
data information to send data securely between
nodes. The system must encrypt the data or"
systematically scramble information so that it
cannot be read without knowing the coding key.
This operation is determined to a certain level of

RC5 Algorithm:
In this Paper, to design wireless network using RC5
algorithm to security of information (data), RC5
algorithm was developed by Ronald Rivest in 1995
as a parameterized symmetric encryption. RC
stands for "Rivest Cipher", oral ternatively, "Ron's
Code". RC5 parameters are: a variable block size
(w), a variable number of rounds (r), and a variable
key size (k).Allowable choices for the block size
(w) are 32, 64 and 128 bits. The number of rounds
range from 0 to 255 bits, and the key size range
from 0 to 2040 bits in size. RC5 has three modules:
key-expansion, encryption and decryption units.
Generally, implementing ciphers in software and
hardware is not efficient based on its speed in terms
of computation and hence the use of hardware
devices is an alternative The RC5 algorithm uses
three primitive operations and their inverses.

the security system; the harder it is to break the

encrypted message, the more secure the system is to
be. Figure 3shows the common use of
encryption/decryption techniques, where unsecured
messages (plain text) are encrypted using a special
encryption technique for my propose using
Symmetric cryptography (RC5 algorithm), sent
over the network, then decrypted at the destination
to viewed back a sun encrypted messages.

a. Addition/subtraction of words modulo 2w,

where w is the word size.
b. Bit-wise exclusive-or denoted by XOR.
c. Rotation: the rotation of word x left by y
bits is denoted by x<<<y. The inverse
operation is the rotation of word x right by
y bits, denoted by x>>>y.
Data-dependent rotation (RC5 incorporates
rotations (Circular bit shifts) whose amount is data
dependent. The RC5 algorithm is designed to have
the following objectives:
(a). Symmetric block cipher.
(b). Suitable for hardware and software.
(c). Fast (RC5 is simple algorithm and is word
oriented, the basic operations work on full words of
data at a time).
(d). Variable length cryptography key (k) (0
-2040) bits.
(e). Adaptable to processors of different wordlength.
(f). Variable number of rounds(r)(0-255).
(g). Simple (RC5 simple structure is easy to
implement and eases the task of determine the
strength of the algorithm.
(h). High Security (It should provide high security
when suitable parameter values are chosen).
(i). Low memory requirements (This property
makes the algorithm suitable for smart cards and
other devices with restricted memory).

Network Simulator (NS2)

To design Wireless network to be known
all variable and define options to nodes.
In this paper used to two way
communication between nodes; some
parameters using in wireless network to
design show below:
a. Routing Protocol: AODV.
b. MAC layer Protocol: TDMA.
c. Physical layers: different channels,
directional antenna, Omni
directional antenna.
d. QoS: Diffserv.
e. Radio propagation, mobility
models, Energy Models.
f. Topology Generation tools.
g. Visualization tools (NAM), Tracing.

Figure 6 to show layout of wireless

network.

Network Simulator (NS2)

SIMULATION
Simulation is one of the important technology in this
modern time. There are so many objects in real or
hypothetical life. The network can also be simulated
on the computer. A network simulator is a technique
of implementing the network on the computer. Most
of the simulators are graphical user interface driven,
there are so many simulators which require
commands or scripts as we talk about the NS2 which
gives input in form of TCL scripts or in AWK scripts
etc. The network parameters describe the state of the
network (node placement, existing links) and the
events. An important output of simulations is the
trace file. Examples of network simulation software
are ns2/ns3, OPNET, NetSim. Network simulators
are particularly used to simulate, design and analyze
the various kinds of networks, also analyze the
performance by the effect of various network
parameters.

Simulation Scenario Using Ns-2

In this section, wireless network performance
depends mainly on the end to end. We are going to
present simulation scenario aimed at activating the
network security through network throughput,
packet transfer between nodes within the scenario by
using cryptography algorithms; in our simulator we
uses RC5 algorithm to cipher package information
that transfer between nodes .Simulation principles
and strategies adopting the separated object model
and using two languages C++ and tclNS2 fulfills the
achievement of simulation for specific protocols and
the configuration nodes and establishment of
network simulation environment respectively. Table
1 refers parameter using in scenario, using the aided
software like

NAM to make a further study, and simulation

process and results analysis. First of all, we set the
topology and the configuration of nodes properties
and also properties of MAC layer like address type,
protocol type, channel type, simulation time,
modulation type, tx ,rx, idle, sleep power and
transmission way of wireless. The following is the
parameters of simulation scenario figure 7 and nodes
layout before transferring information between
them. Figure 8 refers to propagation of all nodes and
is coverage of nodes at some time. Figure 9 refers to
transfer information (package information) between
nodes and coverage are of radio single and send
information (information secure), this information
convert from plaintext to cipher text are (Kurdistan
regional government) between node (0) and node
(24) as scenario. Figure 10 refer to two scenario
transmission information between (node0 and
node24, node 17 and node 9) at some time, also
information is transferred between nodes (17 and 9)
are (Sulaimaniyah International Airport). Figure 11
refer to drop of packages when simulation finished.

Parameters
Area of Simulation
Nodes number
Types of Routing
protocol
Internet protocol type
Antenna Model
Max package
Type of the MAC
Transmission speed
Bandwidth

Values
(500X500)m
35
AODV
TCP
Omnidirectiona
l
50
802.11
1,2 Mbps
20MHz
8

Network Simulator (NS2)

Security algorithm

RC5

Figure. 7 Nam output showing nodes of wireless

networks

Figure. 8 Nam output showing Signal propagation

of wireless nodes

Figure. 9 Nam output Transmission Security

packets (one Scenario)

Figure 10Nam output Transmission Security

packets (two Scenario)

Network Simulator (NS2)

Figure 11 packets are dropped

Conclusion and Future Work

Wireless network is a computer or devices network
which are wireless, and they are commonly
associated with a telecommunications network
whose interconnections between nodes are
implemented without the use of wires. Wireless
telecommunication
networks
are
generally
implemented with some type of remote data
transmission system and control or to automation
that uses electromagnetic waves, such as radio
waves, for the carrier and this implementation
usually takes place at the physical level or "layer"
of the network. The wireless network is likely used
because it is efficient especially in those areas that
wiring is impossible compared to other networks.
When designing wireless networks and/or studying
their behavior under various conditions, software
simulation tools are often used. In this paper, the
software tool Network Simulator (Version 2),
widely known as ns-2, is described and used for the
simulation of selected illustrative examples of
wireless networks. In general, ns2 provides users
with a way of specifying network protocols and

simulating their behavior. The result of the

simulation are transfer information secure between
nodes .In the paper we have ns2.28 simulator the
end user performance of wireless network
consisting 35 nodes ,the simulation result in
following conclusion about network behavior:
a. First is transfer information package between
nodes (two scenario once if node 0 and node24 as
two way communication between them, and node
17 and node 9 also two way communication).
b. Second using Cryptography algorithm (RC5
algorithm) to secure information of package
transfer in communications.
c. Third important feature of simulation using C++
program to security information and tcl language
for scenario script.
d. For future work to use combine of two type
cryptography algorithm as (hybrid) to more secure
information transfer among nodes.

References

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